Place your bets on your favorite off-brand mascot in this hilarious race.
What Is Hot Streak?
Hot Streak is a betting game for 2 to 9 (or more) players, ages 6 and up, and takes about 20 minutes to play. It retails for $49.99 and is available for pre-order directly from CMYK. (The first print run sold out and preorders should be shipping this fall.) The game is easy enough to teach younger kids though they might need a little help reading some of the cards until they learn to recognize them. This is the sort of game where the more, the merrier, but with large player counts (9 or more) there are alternate, somewhat simpler rules.
Hot Streak was designed by Jon Perry and published by CMYK, with art by Cécile Gariépy and figurines sculpted by Josh Divine.
Hot Streak Components
Here’s what comes in the box:
- Racetrack mat
- 4 Mascots
- 53 Race Deck cards
- 12 Side Bet cards
- 12 Mascot Bet tickets
- 6 Side Bet tickets
- “100ish fake money” (according to the rulebook)
First, a note about the box itself, because it’s a highly engineered box that serves both as the game’s container, a display piece, and an integral component of the game itself. The box is a long rectangle, with a clear plastic window on one side that shows off the four mascot figurines. The top of the box also serves as the race podium with first through fourth places marked, and the top lid has a magnetic flap: opening it reveals a shallow tray that holds the cards and money, and lifting out the tray gives access to the mascots. There are two plastic dials on the ends of the box and a strange yellow flap near the bottom edge: pulling on that edge unfurls a vinyl mat, marked with four lanes and some other icons, which serves as the race track.
The mascot figurines are excellent: large, colorful, and goofy. There’s Gobbler, a bear wearing a sports jersey; Mum, a queen wearing a crown and holding a scepter; Hurley, who looks like a hot dog but we’re told is a “bun banger”; and Dangle, a fish with a wide open mouth and what looks like an anglerfish lure with an eyeball on the stalk. One fun detail is that each of them has a tiny set of eyes peeking out somewhere because, after all, these are mascot costumes! I’ll note that Mum’s crown is incredibly pointy—mostly it’s an issue when I’m trying to snap it back into the plastic storage base because it’s hard to press down on that.
All of the betting tickets are cardboard tiles; for each bet there is a top, middle, and bottom, and they’re slightly different lengths so that you can stack them and still see the edge of each one.
The money is paper bills in $1, $5, and $10 denominations, featuring presidential-looking figures who have sports balls for heads. The paper itself is a bit thicker than Monopoly money and has a heft to it and some texture, but it can be easy for bills to stick together a little, just like crisp new paper bills—though I don’t expect they’ll wear the same way as real bills.
There’s a little open-top tuckbox for the cards. The race deck has cards that include one of the four mascots along with its movement, along with a few green cards that move all four mascots. (More details about those in the How to Play section.) The side bet cards look like a blackboard with a hand writing on it in chalk, and they’re all Yes/No questions about an event that may or may not occur during the race. The backs of the side bet cards show a big “YES” so you can flip it over if the thing happens.
The rulebook reminds me a little of the Daybreak rulebook (also from CMYK) in that it starts with several illustrated pages just giving a general overview of the game without getting into specific rules. There are fun illustrations of the racing mascots. Then there’s the actual rules of the game, and then some more supplemental material. There are silly bios of the mascots, and then several pages that tell you your “life outcomes” based on the amount of money you end up with at the end of the game. There’s a handy “Quick Start” guide on the back cover of the rulebook so that you don’t always have to flip through to look for setup details.
My only complaint about the rulebook is that it is very slightly too wide to go into the little box tray, so if you put it in the top of the box, one side falls in and then the other side sticks up just enough to interfere with the magnetic flap unless you’re very careful. The easy fix for this is that I put it under the tray, but now you can see it through the little window, sitting on top of the mascots’ heads. As meticulously as the rest of the game seems to have been engineered, it just seems like an odd thing to miss.
How to Play Hot Streak
You can download a copy of the rulebook here.
The Goal
The goal of the game is to have the most money after three races.
Setup
Give each player $10 and three random race cards.
Create the starting deck by taking the four “Recover, then 2” cards (one per mascot), and then adding a number of random cards based on the player count. These should be placed face up so everyone can see them. Put the rest of the race cards back in the box—you won’t need them.
Pull out the race track and place the four mascots on their designated spaces. Sort the betting tickets and place them in stacks next to the track. Shuffle the side bet cards and place it, question side up, next to the track.
Gameplay
The game will last 3 races. At the beginning of each race, players will snake draft—each player in turn order takes one betting ticket, and then each player in reverse order will take another betting ticket.
Each betting ticket can be played on its “safe” side or “risky” side. The risky mascot bets will award more money if the mascot places first, but less money if it places second or third. The risky side bets pay more money if you’re right, but cost you $5 if you’re wrong.
Then, everyone secretly chooses a card from their hand to add face-down to the race deck. Gather up all the race cards and shuffle it together.
First, “burn” (set aside) the top 3 cards from the race deck without looking at them. Then play the cards one at a time, moving the mascots accordingly.
If the card has a number, the mascot moves forward that many spaces. (Negative numbers move the mascot backward.) Some cards will let a mascot move and then swerve into another lane; some will have the mascot fall down or turn around and face the wrong way. Star cards move the mascot to the next available star in the direction it is facing.
If a mascot moves into an occupied space, it knocks over the mascot there (and continues moving if needed). If a knocked-down mascot would get knocked over again, it is disqualified and takes the lowest available podium space. Mascots who run out of bounds (either by swerving off the side or by running the wrong way off the end) are also disqualified.
Recover cards let a mascot stand back up and face the right direction. The green cards move all of the mascots, but there is no colliding (nobody falls down; they just share space) and no finishing (you can get up to the finish line but stop there).
If the deck runs out, shuffle the deck (including the 3 set-aside cards), and then fold the race track over to the next available white line. If any mascots are covered by the track, they are disqualified. Then burn 3 cards and play out the deck again.
When a mascot crosses the finish line, place it on the first available empty podium space.
When three of the mascots are on the podium, the race ends and you move the last mascot to the last available space.
Mascot betting tickets pay the amount shown if the mascot came in first, second, or third—last place gets nothing. Side bets pay out if you were correct. (Don’t forget that risky side bets cost money if you were wrong!) Pay everyone their winnings, and then return all the betting tickets to their piles and place the mascots back at the starting line. Draw a new side bet card.
Shuffle the race deck and deal each player 1 card from the deck, so that everyone has 3 cards in hand again. Then start another race as before.
For the third race, after you’ve taken two bets, choose one of them to count double and place it above the other one. Payments (and penalties) for that bet are doubled this race.
Game End
The game ends after the third race. Count up your winnings—the player with the most money wins!
The rulebook has “life outcomes” for each dollar amount from $0 to $100, so everyone can read those and find out what they did with their winnings.
Variants
The 2-player game has just a few changes—players get 4 cards in hand and choose 2 to add to the deck, and they get to pick 3 bets each race.
There’s also a variant for 9 or more players—instead of using the regular betting tickets (and money), you’ll just need pencil and paper and somebody to keep track of scores. Everyone simultaneously writes down 1 mascot to bet on and Yes or No for the side bet. Players will split the pots for each place and the side bet.
Instead of players adding cards to the race deck, you just build the full deck, and then between each race you randomly remove 3 cards and add 3 cards from the main deck, and then lay out everything again.
Hot Streak is a 2025 GeekDad Game of the Year Finalist!
Why You Should Play Hot Streak
The rulebook introduces Hot Streak as being “all about betting, racing, and screaming” and that’s a pretty accurate summary. Whenever I first bring out the box and get out the mascots, many players assume that they’re going to play as the mascots. Nope! The mascots are just going to run around wildly, and we get to bet on who we think will win (and of course cheer for our favorites). The fact that these are people wearing unwieldy mascot costumes works really well with the fact that they often run into each other, get turned around, or run off the field entirely—it’s chaotic!
However, even though the races themselves can feel kind of random, there are some boundaries to that chaos. First, you get a bit of a preview of the starting deck before all the betting starts. These cards are randomly dealt, so right off the bat the mascots aren’t on even footing—but the bettors are. You can all see if Hurley has several forward movement cards and Gobbler has a “Fall Down” and “Turn Around” in the deck, and let that inform you. And, of course, everyone has a hand of three cards so you have a tiny bit of control: you can try to sabotage a mascot by throwing in a negative card, or you can use your knowledge that you’re retaining a negative card to your own advantage.
The more players there are, the less information each player has, though. At 3 players, 15 of the cards in the starting deck are known, but if you’re playing with 8 players, there are only 10 known starting cards and the other 8 cards in the deck have been secretly chosen by the players. You’ll find out what they are soon enough, though!
I like the fact that there are a lot of options for the betting, like choosing to take a safe bet or a risky bet, as well as the side bets. There’s also nothing stopping you from placing both of your bets on the same thing (if it’s still available). Feel really confident about Dangle this race? Just go all in, and make them both risky while you’re at it! If there are a lot of green cards in the deck that move everyone, then you can usually expect it to be a quicker, closer race as everyone moves to the front (but can’t cross the finish line) with those cards. If you see a lot of negative cards or swerve cards, you can probably count on more collisions and mascot elimination.
The game does have a slightly different feel depending on the number of players, both because of the number of unknown cards in the deck but also because of the number of betting tickets there are. With 8 players, sometimes by the end of betting there will not be a lot of options, and players may end up taking bets on mascots they didn’t want, or taking the opposite side bet of what they think will actually happen. The upside is that you don’t lose any money unless you make your side bet risky and you’re wrong.
Even so, I do like the game with more players because of the excitement. When you’ve got a table full of people just eagerly awaiting each card flip, it’s a fantastic experience. Cheers of excitement when a mascot breaks away from the pack. Groans when somebody turns around and runs in the wrong direction. (Or the opposite, for players who were betting against them!) The mascots are just extremely entertaining to watch and I love when bizarre situations happen. In one race, we ended up with three mascots lined up in a row and I thought to myself, well, Mum (who was in the front) is going to get run over if either of the others move before she does… but then we drew a “-2” card for Mum and she backed up over the other two and knocked them both down! It was unexpected and amazing.
I’ve found that I just really enjoy betting games in general. Long Shot: The Dice Game, a roll-and-write game about horse racing, was our game of the year back in 2022. Ready Set Bet is another horse-racing game but uses a real-time element where players are slapping down bets while the horses are moving. Just earlier this year I wrote up Emerald Skulls, which lets you bet on other players as they roll dice in a press-your-luck game. Hot Streak is perhaps the quickest of these yet and the easiest to learn: it’s a little more luck-dependent but one that less-experienced gamers can enjoy too (particularly if you have at least one experienced person to guide the betting and payouts). It also just happens to be the silliest one, which has made it fun to play with younger kids too.
The one downside is that the unique box, as impressively engineered as it is, does not travel as well as a regular game box. Its odd shape means that it doesn’t stack neatly in your standard game-carrying bags (or on your shelf), and you have to watch that the knobs on the sides and the edge of the mat don’t get snagged on anything. I have taken it to game nights on occasion, but when I flew to visit family last month I didn’t want to risk sticking it into a suitcase for the trip.
If you like wacky mascots and a little bit of chaos in your game nights, I highly recommend Hot Streak! Visit CMYK to pre-order a copy.
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Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this game for review purposes.
